Japanese Period (1914-1941)

In accordance with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan entered and secured the German colonies of the Palau, Caroline, and Marshall Islands early in the First World War. This marked the end of the German Period (1899-1914). In the post-war redistribution of former German Colonies, the League of Nations provided for Japanese administration of the islands through the South Seas Mandate, though Japan withdrew from the League in 1935 without relinquishing control of the mandated territory. In accordance with the "Class C" status of the Mandate, the islands were governed as an integral part of the Japanese Empire, and were largely closed to foreign ships and visitors. During the subsequent War in the Pacific (1941-1945), these strategically situated islands and their surrounding waters became the scenes of decisive naval and military operations.

Overveiw

Japanese administration in the islands passed through four sequential phases: (1) Military government following occupation, 1914-18; (2) military control with civil assistance, when Naval officers held key positions while Japanese civil servants carried out routine government programs, 1918-22; (3) civil government, with the establishment of the South Seas Bureau, 1922-35; and (4) military domination of that civil government, 1935-44.

Japanese colonial policy can similarly be summarized by four, sequential, main objectives: (1) To develop the islands in an economic sense; (2) to prepare them as a place to which Japanese nationals could migrate as colonists, thus relieving population pressure in Japan; (3) to Japanize the islanders gradually through education and propaganda and by promoting cultural change; and (4) to establish offensive military, naval, and air bases in the islands in preparation for war.

(see also "Establishment of the Japanese Mandate" and "The Japanese Regime" for details of Japanese occupation and administration).

Japanese Seize of the Islands

In October, 1914, a Japanese naval squadron took military possession of the Palau, Caroline and Marshall Islands, interning the German officials and businessmen and eventually shipping them beck to Germany. Although the acting German governor of New Guinea had formally surrendered these islands to the British on 17 September 1914, the Japanese methodically occupied Jaluit on 3 October; Yap and Pohnpei on 7 October; Chuuk on 12 October; Saipan on 14 October; and Anguar on 31 October.

The squadron commander immediately established a military administration of the islands. In December of the same' year the administration was taken over by a newly created Provisional Naval Garrison or South Seas Defense Corps, which had its headquarters on Truk and established regional garrisons at Saipan, Palau, Truk, Ponape, and Jaluit to conduct civil affairs in five administrative districts centering on these islands. In April, 1915, a sixth district was created, with garrison headquarters on Yap.

On July 1, 1918, the Japanese established a Civil Administration Department, which remained, however, under the control of the Naval Garrison. The regional garrisons relinquished their administrative functions, retaining only their police functions, and civil administration stations were set up by the new Department in each of the six administrative districts. These stations were manned by civilian personnel, and were responsible directly to the Department.

Post War Status Discussions

By a secret agreement in March, 1917, Great Britain recognized the claims of Japan to all the former German possessions in the Pacific north of the equator, and the approval of France and Russia was also obtained when the peace conference met at Versailles, therefore, it was faced with the fact of virtual annexation.

American efforts were powerless to effect any significant change, although the situation was rendered somewhat more palatable by devising a special category of Class C mandates to cover the cases. Such a mandate differed from outright annexation only by imposing upon the mandatory power a number of obligations, notably, to promote the material and moral well-being and social progress of the natives, to prohibit slavery and forced labor, to control traffic in arms, to exclude alcoholic beverages, to refrain from building, fortification- and military bases, to permit freedom of worship and missionary activity, and to submit an annual report to the League of Nations. On these terms Japan was confirmed, in 1920, in her possession of the Caroline, Marshall, and Marianas Islands as a mandatory under the League of Nations. It was not until 1922, as a result of the Washington Conference, that the United States accepted the arrangement, and then only after prolonged negotiations and special assurances that American interests in Yap would be safeguarded (see Yap Crisis).

Transition to Civil Administration

In accordance with the terms of the mandate, the Japanese began to withdraw their armed forces from the islands in 1921 and completed the withdrawal in March, 1922. During the period from 1920 to 1922 the Civil Administration Department acted under direct instructions from the Minister of the Navy. In preparation for civilian administration, the headquarters of the Department were transferred from Truk to Koror in Palau in July, 1921. In March, 1922, the Provisional Naval Garrison was abolished, and in the following month its place was taken by the South Seas Government, a civilian administrative organization.

Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in March, 1935. She kept the mandated territory, defining it as an integral part of the Japanese empire,” but she continued to administer it in much the same way and to submit annual reports to the League through the year 1938, After that year all pretense of international supervision vanished, and the islands were increasingly treated as a closed military area.

Japanese Policy Aims

Whereas the principal objective of the Spanish administration was religious proselytism and that of the Germans was commercial expansion, the primary ends of Japanese policy were political and military. Native political heads were shorn of much of their authority. Trade and intercourse with foreign nations was quietly discouraged. The islands attracted little attention in the outside world until 1932, when rumors gained currency that Japan was fortifying some of the inlands, notably Truk. The Japanese Government categorically denied the reports; events of December, 1941 demonstrated that the rumors had a basis in fact.

Except on the question of sovereignty, the Japanese colonial policy had officially been identical with that of the League of Nations. Actually, however, it was quite different. Insofar as it can be inferred from events and from administrative acts, the colonial policy of the Japanese Government with respect to the mandated islands can be summarized under four headings, as follows: (1) to develop the islands in an economic sense; (2) to prepare them as a place to which Japanese nationals could migrate as colonists, thus relieving population pressure in Japan itself; (3) to Japanize the natives as rapidly as possible through education and propaganda and by promoting cultural change; and (4; to establish offensive and defensive military, naval, and air bases in the islands in preparation for a war of aggrandizement in the Pacific.

Books on the Japanese Period

Myers RH Peattie MR Zhen J Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. The Japanese Colonial Empire 1895-1945. Princeton N.J: Princeton University Press; 1984.

Peattie MR. Nanʻyō : The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia 1885-1945. Honolulu: Center for Pacific Islands Studies School of Hawaiian Asian and Pacific Studies University of Hawaii : University of Hawaii Press; 1988.

Duus P Myers RH Peattie MR Zhou W Japan-United States Friendship Commission. The Japanese Wartime Empire 1931-1945. Princeton N.J: Princeton University Press; 1996.

Books from the Japanese Period

Matsumura Ryō. Contributions to the Ethnography of Micronesia.; 1918.

Yamasaki N. Micronesia and Micronesians. Honolulu: Institute of Pacific Relations; 1927.

Brown JM. Peoples & Problems of the Pacific. London: T. Fisher Unwin; 1927.

Clyde PH. Japan's Pacific Mandate. New York: Macmillan; 1935.

Bodley RVC. My Wanderings in Unknown Micronesia.; 1935.

Price W. Rip Tide in the South Seas. London: W. Heinemann; 1936.

Price W. Mysterious Micronesia : Yap Map and Other Islands Under Japanese Mandate Are Museums of Primitive Man. Washington: National Geographic Society; 1936.

Yanaihara T. Pacific Islands Under Japanese Mandate. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh; 1939.

Texts and Articles on the Japanese Period

Maga, Timothy P. “Prelude to War? The United States, Japan, and the Yap Crisis, 1918–22.” Diplomatic History, vol. 9, no. 3, 1985, pp. 215–31

Hoadley, Steve. “Japan’s Pacific Island Policies.” New Zealand International Review, vol. 16, no. 3, 1991, pp. 21–22.

Texts and Articles from the Japanese Period

“Japan’s Naval Effort: How Her Fleet Aided the Allies in the Pacific and Mediterranean—Her Newly Acquired Islands.” Current History (1916-1940), vol. 12, no. 3, 1920, pp. 518–21.

Wood JB. Yap and Other Pacific Islands Under Japanese Mandate. Washington D.C: National Geographic Society; 1921.

Harris, Walter B. “The South Sea Islands under Japanese Mandate.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4, 1932, pp. 691–97.

Occupied Areas Section. 1944. “Illustrative Cases From Military Occupations.” Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Civil Affairs Studies, OPNAV 50E-10

Theses and Dissertations from the Japanese Period

Clark DH. Pacific Islands Under Japanese Mandate. 1935.

Fukuzawa E-I. The Question of Sovereignty in Relation to Japan's Mandate of the South Pacific Islands. 1935.

Pauwels PC. The Japanese Mandate Islands. 1936.

Lee RL. The American-Japanese Controversy Over the Island of Yap. 1939.

Theses and Dissertations on the Japanese Period

Nakamura Y. Japan and the Yap Controversy. 1967.

King MC. A Comparison of the Japanese Administration of Micronesia Under the League of Nations Mandate with the United States Administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands Under the United Nations Trusteeship Agreement. 1976.

Schencking JC. The Japanese Navy in World War I and the Seizure of German Micronesia. 1994.

Treaties from the Japanese Period

United States Japan. Treaty between the United States and Japan. Regarding Rights of the Two Governments and Their Respective Nationals in Former German Islands in the Pacific Ocean North of the Equator and in Particular the Island of Yap. Signed at Washington February 11 1922. Washington: Govt. Print. Off; 1922.